Retrospecting agile government

Last week, I was in New Orleans for the CivicActions corporate retreat, and presented to the team on the work done around Agile Government Leadership, and I wanted to share some of this here because, while there’s still much to do around changing government project management practices, we’ve accomplished a great deal over the past 18 months since its inception.

Here’s an overview:

• Press: We were featured in a number of industry publications, including a cover story in "Public CEO."
• Steering committee: We established an incredible steering committee, comprised of cross-section of public and private sector agile practitioners.
• Handbook: We developed an Agile Government Handbook to help those new to agile get started.
• Case studies: We produced five agile government case studies from local, state and federal agencies.
• Community: We established an agile government LinkedIn community that has nearly 400 members (join it).
• Newsletter: We publish a monthly newsletter with more than 300 subscribers (subscribe to it).
• AGL Live: We produce a monthly Google Hangout on Air discussion with government leaders covering issues in public sector Agile development.
• Updates: We regularly post latest agile government news, events and jobs.

Challenges:

• Momentum: This isn't necessarily a reflection on the work we're doing, but more the reality on the time it takes to bring awareness and influence culture change. We've seen this with government adoption of open source and open data, and changing project management practices, especially when procurement policies play a big role, will take time.

Next steps:

We’re currently conducting a survey on how AGL can best address the community needs, so please take the survey.

Additional thoughts:

When you’re in the weeds building something, you don’t always take the time to fully step back and take a holistic look at what’s been accomplished, but I’m really proud of the work that’s been done by so many people. Big shout out and thank you to the AGL steering committee and my colleagues Elizabeth Raley, Henry Poole, Aaron Pava, Bill Ogilvie and the entire CivicActions team for supporting this initiative.

AGL is proof that true civic innovation is about collaboration across the public and private sectors, focusing on impact, adding value and, when it comes to transforming government, believing in the long game.